Naomi Shihab Nye Quotes

I realized that a great deal of life is exactly and precisely about being able to feel pain: my own and other people's.

When you truly know the meaning of the word love, you will also know the meaning of the word pain.

He who's never loved cannot be good.

I think your heart needs to be broken, and broken open, at least once to have a heart at all or to have a heart for others.

What is genius or courage without a heart?

What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering?

Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love.

Suffering is part and parcel of extensive intelligence and a feeling heart.

Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.

Life is so hard, how can we be anything but kind?

We may thank God that we can feel pain and know sadness, for these are the human sentiments that constitute our glory as well as our grief.

I want my boys to have an understanding of people's emotions, their insecurities, people's distress, and their hopes and dreams.

Only when the sense of the pain of others begins does man begin.

What I remember as a child is that other kids didn't care about suffering. I always did.

People aren't very good at other people's pain.

I used to believe that hurting would make you more alive to the hurting of others. I used to believe in feeling bad because somebody else did. Now I'm not so sure of either.

People who have suffered know more about compassion.

I think that I come off as, 'Nothing bothers me, I don't care! I'm funny and sassy.' But I'm deeply sensitive. Not only about myself but to others. Not to pat myself on the back, empathy is a quality I've cultivated over my life. It came naturally to me as a child.

When our TV screens are filled with heartbreaking images of suffering, we have to dig deep inside ourselves in order to keep going.

I am surprisingly very sensitive.

My heart goes out to anyone who suffers, and of course, to their families.

I know what it's like to feel distraught as I am an incredibly sensitive guy and feel for anything and everyone in pain, particularly my own sister.

They learned no compassion from their own anguish. thus their suffering was wasted.

I was hurt so deep that I made up my mind never to hurt anybody else, no matter what. I never made jokes about anybody's big ears, their stut-terin', or about them bein' off their nut.

If we begin to get in touch with whatever we feel with some kind of kindness, our protective shells will melt, and we'll find that more areas of our lives are workable. AS we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others-what and whom we can work with, and how-becomes wider.